Shame - Food For Worms (Album Review)

Since establishing themselves as figureheads of the British post-punk revival with their 2018 debut, ‘Songs of Praise’, South London’s Shame have not been ones for complacency.

Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Monday, 27 February 2023

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Land of Sleeper (Album Review)

British doom metal bands occupy key spots in the genre’s canon. Black Sabbath invented it, Electric Wizard made it more evil, Iron Monkey upped the transgressive ante and, more recently, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have imbued this dark and murky genre with crossover-friendly fun.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Thursday, 23 February 2023

Black Belt Eagle Scout - The Land, The Water, The Sky (Album Review)

Photo: Nate Lemuel of Darklisted Photography For the uninitiated, Black Belt Eagle Scout is the musical outlet of Swinomish multi-instrumentalist Katherine Paul. Her Native ancestry has always been an important backdrop to her music, but on what is now her third record for Saddle Creek, these themes take a greater prominence than ever before.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Shania Twain - Queen of Me (Album Review)

Showing laudable resilience after huge parts of her arsenal were torn away, ‘Queen Of Me’ is an entertaining and vibrant pop record from Shania Twain that, when it strikes the right equilibrium between her unique input and some necessary production choices, represents a nice cathartic pick me up.  

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway (Album Review)

A ‘desire pathway’ is a route forged as an alternative to assigned roads, worn over time into a flat surface by individuals who have deemed it the best direction in which to travel. For a seasoned band such as Screaming Females, establishing such paths has almost become second nature.

Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Tuesday, 21 February 2023

Andy Shauf - Norm (Album Review)

Photo: Angela Lewis It's well known that there is a bar in Boston where everybody knows your name, and it seems appropriate that Andy Shauf’s latest record ‘Norm’ shares its name with one of the most recognisable characters from the iconic sitcom Cheers.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Monday, 20 February 2023

Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (Album Review)

Photo: Nedda Asfar It didn’t take long following the dissolution of her former band Chairlift for Caroline Polachek to step out into the world of pop under her own name. In 2019 she skipped beyond the production-focused work of her early solo career to release ‘Pang’, a top-drawer record that hummed with avant-pop promise.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Thursday, 16 February 2023

Paramore - This is Why (Album Review)

Everybody, it seems, is a little bit in love with Paramore right now. But that’s almost become the normal state of affairs in their corner of the internet. It’s rare to see interest in a band surge as it has for them in the past couple of years with only the vague promise of new music dangled above fans’ heads. They trend on Twitter at random intervals, with vocalist Hayley Williams seemingly only needing to exhale to have their following in raptures.

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Wednesday, 15 February 2023

Kelela - Raven (Album Review)

Photo: Justin French Six years on from Kelela’s debut, she has released a sophomore album of incredible fine tuning; presenting and proselytising around the Black queer female experience in a way that is at times forthright, delicate and incredibly groovy.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 14 February 2023

Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World (Album Review)

Photo: Cheryl Dunn It could be argued that Yo La Tengo are something of a jam band, especially when they lay down the bones of a record as a live three piece. That is once again the case on their sublime 16th LP ‘This Stupid World’, where their extended instrumental sections and experimental voyages are enlivened by grizzled pop melodies and euphoria-inducing breakdowns.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Monday, 13 February 2023

Raye - My 21st Century Blues (Album Review)

‘My 21st Century Blues’ is the debut album from London-born singer songwriter Raye, and it arrives pretty well formed after a bumpy journey. Signed by major label Polydor at 17, she became a frequent featured artist on dance tracks before acrimoniously parting with the label in 2021, claiming that the company had been delaying the release of her album. The result is a record of diverse pop sounds, full of energy and invention, that fires a few shots back at her former colleagues.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 08 February 2023

Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy (Album Review)

It’s been half a decade since art-pop genre-mashers Young Fathers last graced us with their all encompassing sounds, but with their fourth album ‘Heavy Heavy’ the trio show that great things come to those that wait.

Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Tuesday, 07 February 2023

Sam Smith - Gloria (Album Review)

Photo: Michael Bailey Gates Cast your mind back into the mists of time. It's the early 2010s and a new singer-songwriter is bestriding the pop charts like a latter day Cliff Richard. Their singing voice is tender, distinctive and utterly ubiquitous, and a host of blue chip musical collaborations appear to be lining up to blast them into the pop stratosphere.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 06 February 2023

Samia - Honey (Album Review)

Over a haunting score, Samia pours out raw, melancholy lyrics. Dripping in emotion while divulging her innermost thoughts, opening track Kill Her Freak Out is an eerily beautiful introduction to her second album, ‘Honey’.

Written by: Rebecca Llewellyn | Date: Friday, 03 February 2023

The Arcs - Electrophonic Chronic (Album Review)

Photo: Alysse Gafkjen ‘Electrophonic Chronic’ is the long awaited follow up to the Arcs’ 2015 debut ‘Yours, Dreamily’ but, tragically, it comes after the death of band member Richard Swift in 2018. Most of the groundwork was completed before Swift passed, meaning the core of the album was in place some six or seven years ago, and with something like 100 tracks in the vaults frontman Dan Auerbach resolved to release something as “a way for us to say goodbye to him”.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 02 February 2023

Lil Yachty - Let's Start Here. (Album Review)

Lil Yachty has long prided himself on being one to stand out: individualistic and relentlessly optimistic, he set himself apart from the face-tatted mumble rappers that broke through alongside him. Musically, however, he's never managed to set himself apart as much as he does visually.

Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Wednesday, 01 February 2023

King Tuff - Smalltown Stardust (Album Review)

Photo: Wyndham Garnett King Tuff’s one of those musicians who’s been around so long, and has ploughed such a similar furrow to uber-prolific garage-rock acts such as Osees and Ty Segall, that it’s easy to forget he’s only released six studio albums.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Tuesday, 31 January 2023

SG Lewis - AudioLust & HigherLove (Album Review)

Photo: Lauretta Suter Despite what you might think, SG Lewis is not a high concept cabaret act combining the characters of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, and neither is he the offspring of 1990s reggae star CJ Lewis, reaching for his father’s legacy. He’s an electronic music producer from Reading.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 30 January 2023

Fucked Up - One Day (Album Review)

Photo: Jeaninne Kaufer “What could you do in just one day?” This question, posed in the title track of Fucked Up’s latest full length, was at the forefront of guitarist Mike Haliechuk’s mind when he conceived the band’s sixth album. The idea was a simple one: to see if he could write and record an album's worth of material in just 24 hours of studio time, and have his bandmates lay down their parts within the same time constraints.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Friday, 27 January 2023

Dave Rowntree - Radio Songs (Album Review)

Photo: Paul Postle Usually when a 58-year-old man releases his first album, it becomes a bit of a punchline. Not so with ‘Radio Songs’, which is a decent collection of comfortable indie tracks, with elaborate rhythms and textures woven in. And taking a closer look at Dave Rowntree, one shouldn’t be too surprised.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 26 January 2023